


Fight With Your Bare Hands About It Now

by Duck_Life



Category: Shatterstar (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Clubbing, Depression, Gen, Haircuts, Hook-Up, Moving On, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 17:00:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16223423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Julio tries to move on after slamming the door on the best relationship he's ever had.





	Fight With Your Bare Hands About It Now

Tabitha drapes a bleach-stained Little Mermaid towel around his shoulders before she starts cutting his hair. “You're sure?” she asks before making the first snip. “I thought you were growing it out “

“I was,” he says, staring at himself in her vanity mirror. “I'm not anymore. I want it short.”

“Okay,” she shrugs, adjusting his head a little before starting to cut. Tabby makes methodic motions with her scissors, more careful with this than she is with most things. She accidentally nicked Julio’s ear with a razor once when they were kids and has vowed to be more careful since then. “We missed you at brunch last week. Sam brought his rugrat. _Adorbs_.” Rictor grunts but doesn't say anything. “How have you been holding up? You know, since— "

“If I wanted to hear a bunch of invasive questions, I could have just gone to an actual barbershop,” he snaps, sinking into the chair.

Tabby doesn't even look offended. She just shrugs. “Why go to a real barbershop when you've got a best friend with one incomplete semester of beauty school?” _Snip, snip_.

Julio’s hair collects in large and small chunks on the Little Mermaid towel.

* * *

 Julio wakes up in time to see Pietro pulling on his jeans. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” the speedster says, smirking. “Gotta say, I’m glad your powers are back. Thought you were gonna shake my apartment building apart last night, but, uh, in a good way.”

“If I recall, you weren’t exactly so quick on your feet last time we tangled,” Julio points out, stretching out beneath the sheets. Pietro’s fucking spoiled and owns 1,200 thread-count Egyptian cotton bedding, and Julio’s fucking loving it. “Last night was good.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Pietro smirks again, zipping up his jeans. He buttons them and straightens up, his abs catching the light from the window.

“Yeah,” Julio sighs, leaning back with his hands behind his head. It’s like he’s been on edge for weeks, and he’s only now unwinding. “So, listen, I’m busy on weekends with the club but if you wanna get dinner on Monday or… or Wednesday, I’m free Wednesday…” He trails off, watching Pietro’s lazy smile slide off his face. “What?”

“Yeah, we’re not doing this. Julio… last night was fun,” Pietro explains. “But I’m not really a relationship guy— especially not right now. And you, you don’t need to be dealing with my shit. I mean, I’ve got Avengers shit and… Rictor, I’ve got a daughter, you don’t want to—”

“That’s fine,” Julio says too quickly, sitting up. “I can handle that. I can take a kid yelling, ‘You’re not my dad,’ at me.”

Pietro sighs. “Look, man, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not what I need right now. And I am _definitely_ not what you need right now.”

Julio puts a hand over his face, his shoulders sinking. “Yeah,” he says finally, through his fingers. “Yeah. You’re right.” It’s just that he’s been so antsy and restless. It’s just that in a few short weeks he’s already forgotten what it’s like to share space with another person, what it’s like to be pressed against someone so tightly that you forget whose body is whose. Pietro, as fun as he is, is a far cry from… from his ex. But at least he’s something.

“I’m sorry,” Pietro says, and bizarrely, he really sounds like it. He picks a t-shirt up off the floor, sniffs it, shrugs, and then pulls it on. “Hey, do you want to get brunch?”

Julio thinks about it for a second and says, “Yeah, sure.”

* * *

 Pietro takes him to a French cafe and offers to treat, and Julio spends so much time deciding whether he should let him that the waitress goes ahead and rings up the bill for Pietro before he can say anything. “I really did have fun last night,” Pietro assures Julio as he pushes around the last dregs of scrambled eggs on his plate. “And if you ever need anything— help, or a hookup— I’ll be there faster than light.” He winks.

“Yeah, well…” Julio says, and then he suddenly remembers something. He’s been putting off going back to their— _just his now_ , _not ours,_ he has to remember that— apartment. Basically been living in the same tank top and jeans. He bought a new toothbrush and a bottle of shampoo, moved into the loft above his club. “I’ve still got all my shit at… at the apartment,” he says, continuing to toy with his eggs. “D’you think you could, yanno, run in and grab my sweaters and my CDs for me?”

Pietro offers him a sad smile. “Yes, I can do that for you.”

Later, sitting in his once-empty apartment now surrounded by all his stuff, Julio wraps his arms around himself and tries not to think about how even with everything around him, the apartment feels colder and emptier than ever.

* * *

 Having an office in the back of The Shakedown is about the closest Julio’s ever going to get to having “an office job.” It's where he signs off on liquor orders, handles payroll and keeps track of the finances.

Right now, he’s using it to sulk.

He gets interrupted from his sulking and general mopery when bartender Stecky raps on the door. “Mr. Richter? Someone up there asking for you.”

“You can just call me Rictor,” he reminds her for the fifteenth time. Stecky’s maybe two or three years younger than him, and he can't handle that kind of formality. “Tell them I'm not here.”

“Oh, I did,” she says, looking kind of nervous but also kind of curious. Everyone who works at The Shakedown has been clamoring to know more about the owner’s personal life. “She says she's your sister.”

Oh. _Jesus_. “Alright, yeah, I'm coming,” he sighs, pushing himself up from the desk chair. He usually tries not to drink while he's working, but tonight he's been breaking that rule. Hell, he’s been breaking that rule for two weeks.

Stecky jogs back to deal with the customers, leaving Julio to stomp down to the bar alone. He finds a familiar face among the crowd of patrons, sitting at the bar with a vodka and cranberry juice. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Tabby whirls around, looking delighted. “It's ‘lesbians drink free’ night!”

“No, it’s not,” he says, leaning against the bar beside her. “That's not a thing.”

“Of course it is,” she says sagely. “ _Every_ night is ‘lesbians drink free’ night. Hey, lesbians!” she yells to a crowd of women behind her. “Drinks are on this guy.” She jerks a thumb toward Julio, and he scowls. “C’mon, Ric, lighten up,” Tabby says, elbowing him. “I'm allowed to be here. Your sign says ‘all are welcome here.’”

He raises an eyebrow. “You saw that sign?”

“Yeah, I saw it,” she says. “With the little rainbow and the trans pride flag. And that's what it says, it says ‘all are welcome here.’”

“Uh-huh. You didn't look at it closely enough.” He steps away from the bar to grab the sign from the club’s door, and then he holds it up to her.

“‘All are welcome here,’” Tabby reads aloud. “... ‘except for Tabby Smith.’ Hey, fuck you.”

Julio grins and ruffles her hair. “Hey, Stecky,” he says to his bartender. “She drinks free, alright?” Stecky gives him a thumbs-up. He leans his elbows against the bar, level with Tabby. “So…” he says, drawing it out. “You heard from… ?”

“You know I haven’t,” she says, giving him a sympathetic frown. “Nobody hears from him. Not me, not Rahne.”

“He’s probably doing fine,” Julio sighs, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Listen, I gotta go…” He tries to think of an excuse for why he needs to go back to his office— his cave— and be lonely. “I gotta check on some stuff. Club stuff.”

“Okay,” she says, but it looks like she knows he’s lying. “Love you, Ric.”

“Love you too, Tabs.” He walks away, disappears into the noise and the dark and the shaking, moving bodies all around him.

* * *

 Lila Cheney calls it a surprise show when she turns up at the club one Friday night. “I didn’t think surprise shows were supposed to be a surprise to the owner, too,” Julio ribs her, and she pulls him into a hug without letting go of her beer.

“Aw, lighten up, Ric, that’s what makes it fun,” she says. “Quick, go post about me on The Shakedown’s Instagram, you’ll get more bodies in the door.”

“I don’t… there is no Shakedown Instagram account,” he splutters.

Lila rolls her eyes. “Jesus, Rictor, get outta the nineties,” she sighs. “Listen, I’m gonna go set up. Gonna be a great show, I promise.”

“Always is,” he calls after her. For a brief moment, he wonders if she’s here to rob him. If so, she’s out of luck. The fucking club is barely staying afloat, and it’s the end of the month anyway.

When Lila starts her set, opening with her song “Sam,” Julio puts any thought about her stealing from him out of his mind. She’s not here for that. She’s here, at a hole-in-the-wall punk club in Queens, for the same reason he is, for the same reason a lot of his patrons are here.

She’s lonely.

Lonely, and full of regrets. Since their breakup years ago, Sam Guthrie has joined the Avengers, gotten married and had a kid. He’s changed so much.

Lila hasn’t even changed her set list.

“This next one’s a cover,” Lila says about midway through her show, “originally performed by my close personal friends, you might’ve heard of them. Joan Jett and Laura Jane Grace of Against Me!”

Jeez, he’d forgotten how much of a name-dropper Lila was. One time she’d tried to impress him by pointing out that she’d performed with Dazzler. Julio hadn’t had the heart to tell her then that at the time he was dating Dazzler’s son.

Lila starts singing, and Julio doesn’t focus on the words until she reaches the chorus. “ _We were fated to be together, we were fated to be apart. We were soulmates and then we were strangers_.”

Okay, well. That’s enough of that. Julio weaves around the crowd and goes to stand on the stoop outside the building, as if he can’t hear Lila just as well from across the club. He greets a couple people coming in, some regulars he recognizes.

A guy he knows, a guitarist coming from a gig at an open mic, walks up the steps and greets him with a wide grin. Julio goes to clasp his hand as a hello, still half-listening to Lila, “ _Do you think you ever loved me? And do you think of me, do you think I think of you?_ ” And that’s when he feels the eyes on him.

Still talking to the guy with the guitar, he turns and glances outside, at the sidewalk. And there he is.

Shatterstar.

Shatterstar, in a nice suit, giving him the same look he did the day Julio stormed out. Julio glares directly at him, regret and longing and anger bubbling up in his chest, and for a second there’s a serious risk of the fissures beneath the sidewalk splitting open. But he calms down. He gets himself under control. And he turns away, leading guitar guy into the club. Leaving Shatterstar behind.

“ _We were fated to be together, we were fated to be apart. We were soulmates and then we were strangers. We were soulmates that turned into strangers._

_“We were soulmates and now we are strangers.”_


End file.
